After the meal, Hector paid. I didn’t offer to chip in. I wasn’t being blackmailed anymore, but I liked to think that a history of it meant free meals for the duration. Outside, we had walked to the corner of the building when Hector stopped us, his hand held up by his shoulder. He’d wanted to park out front where he could keep an eye on the car from one of the plate-glass windows, but no spaces had been available.
“Let me take a look first.”
“I’ve never seen a spy or assassin blow anyone up at a Denny’s in the movies,” I said dryly.
“How many actual spies and assassins have you done readings on?” Meleah took up for Hector. He might not have to take his head out of his ass after all. Meleah could grab a handy crowbar and do it for him.
“You’ve got me there,” I admitted. “Sociopaths, yes. Spies and paid assassins, no.”
As Hector took a step around the corner, I leaned out for a look myself. Hector stopped after the one step and crouched down low, tilting his head to scan the undercarriage of the car. It was four spaces down, but the cars that had been parked between the corner and our ride were now gone. Hector had a clear range of vision. From the stiffening of his shoulders, I could tell he didn’t like what he saw.
I didn’t wait for him to straighten or yell a warning. I grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back around the corner just as the car exploded. One second I was standing, and the next I was flat, half on concrete, half in cedar chips that nestled scrubby bushes struggling against the wicked summer. There was nothing but ringing in my ears, although I knew everyone in the restaurant would be screaming. Everyone alive. I rolled over, window glass cascading off of me, and saw flames above the roof. An explosion that big, the car bumper only a few feet from the building, anyone sitting on the other side of that wall would be lucky to be breathing. Or unlucky, depending on their condition.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Hector. He was trying to sit up. Meleah had been behind me. I turned my head to see her echoing Hector’s motions. Good for them both. I was staying flat until I was sure my head was still attached to my body. Then again, whoever had planted that bomb was here. Or close. They’d seen Hector spot it and stop. They’d chosen to go ahead and blow it by remote control, hoping at least to get one of us. If Charlie’s brother was gone, Thackery would be in complete control and have me thrown off base before they’d finished picking up all of Hector’s pieces. I’d be alive, but I wouldn’t be a threat anymore, not to Thackery or the spy. A win-win for both bad sides.
I remembered being a kid-little, maybe five-and I’d thought in those days that there was a good side and a bad side. Then I grew up and learned that there can be multiple bad sides and sometimes not a single good one to fight them all. But that was not the case here. Hector had dragged me into this, yet he was the good side with more on his plate than he could handle.
I sat up, my gloves protecting me from the glass on the shattered windows that littered the concrete. A moment later, I crouched and was on my feet. I was swaying, mildly nauseated, deaf as a fence post, but it didn’t stop me from thinking.
When you were watching your prey, waiting to flip a switch, press a button, or dial a number on a cell phone to set things in motion, a bomb was a trick. A simple trick but a trick all the same. You didn’t want to be detected ahead of time, and you didn’t want to be seen. What to do? Denny’s was in a row of three restaurants, and beyond that was nothing for miles. Someone sitting in a car by themselves, not in the restaurant eating, that was noticeable. So what did you do? What someone like me would do. What an ex-con man would do.
Misdirection. Misdirection. Misdirection.
I ran to the far edge of the parking lot. The restaurants were spaced far enough apart to get a view of their fronts and sides and a partial view of the backs. Denny’s was at the end, with Hector’s car burning between it and the next eatery. That next one in the middle was an Italian place, and beyond that was a steak place. I saw running people who were screaming in all of the parking lots. I couldn’t hear them, but their mouths were open wide with terror. Screaming was a logical guess. I didn’t see anyone sitting in a car alone. I did see a refrigerated meat truck parked in front of the steak joint. Steak places did need steak, but you delivered your frozen dead cow through the back. You didn’t ruin the customer’s appetite by carrying it through the front door. But the back of the meat lover’s delight didn’t have a view of the Denny’s side lot. That was blocked by the middle restaurant.
As misdirections went, it was pretty shitty, but out in the middle of nowhere as we were, options were limited, and sometimes the best of us have to make do with less than the best of plans.
I started running again, this time through the next parking lot and headed for the one where the meat truck sat. I doubted that the windows had been tinted in the cab when the truck was stolen, but they were now. I saw a shade, the horror-movie creepy-phantom kind, move inside as the window began to roll down. Ghosts I didn’t have to worry about. This son of a bitch, he was the deadly one.
Already through the next parking lot, I was on the verge of passing over a concrete curb to enter the one with the truck. I was close when I saw the gun, but not too close to imagine a bullet exiting the back of my head in a spray of blood and brains. I should’ve dropped to the ground behind a car. It was the smart, staying-alive-to- bitch-another-day thing to do-except…
Except I was fucking pissed.
This shit had killed Charlie, someone I’d liked no matter how much I denied it. He’d tried to kill me with napalm and then a goddamn bomb. In the boondocks of Georgia-a bomb. Who does that?
Someone whose ass I was going to kick to the state line and back before doing worse. I didn’t like guns, I hadn’t since I’d held one for the first and last time at the age of fourteen, but there were other ways to get things done. And as we said in these parts, sometimes a man just needs killing. This son of a bitch fit the bill.
I crouched but kept running-right until the asphalt parking lot came up to slam me in the face. Or it would have, if I hadn’t gotten my hands under me in time to avoid a broken nose. I did get some road rash on my chin from the feel of it and the breath knocked out of me as at least two hundred pounds landed on my back. I did discover that some of my hearing was back as I heard shots fired from about thirty feet in front of me and more from about three feet above my ear.
With the hearing in one ear gone again, I depended on the other to hear a truck’s engine revving, the screech of metal hitting metal, and the roar of an engine fading.
“Shit.” It wasn’t me who said it. I didn’t have enough breath in my crushed lungs to say anything, but I wholeheartedly shared the sentiment. King Kong rolled off of me and took a fistful of my shirt to pull me up to my knees and yank me around to face him. “Idiot. Are you dead? You damn well should be.”
I wheezed until I had enough air to snap back. “I had a plan.”
Hector, gun still in his other hand, gave me a light shake. “And what was your plan, Jackson, that was going to save you from running straight at a gun? I’m dying to know.”
“Ducking.” I glared and pushed his hand off. All that anger and adrenaline and nothing I could do with it. It was a little different from using my fake Glock to scare off junkies out to rob my shop. I’d been lucky. None of them had had guns yet, only knives. A fake gun and Houdini were more than enough to take care of them. This time, I had faced a gun, a real one, and my only disappointment in what I’d done was that Hector had been able to catch me. My stepfather had tried to kill me when I was fourteen, and this asshole was trying to kill me now. Enough. I’d had enough.
“Motherf-” Hector cut himself off. He’d cursed more today than I’d heard in the entire week or so that I’d known him-even when a cannibal was throwing his colleagues off a mill roof. His post-Army discipline was failing him. “I blackmail you, almost get you killed, then drive you over the edge to suicidal. Why not? It’s what I deserve. I’m going straight to hell. No doubt about it.”
He stood and turned to a heavyset older man who’d been running to his car, keys out. Unfortunately for him, it was his car next to which Hector had tackled me.
“We need to borrow your car.” Hector didn’t point the gun at the guy. First, Hector didn’t have that in him. Carjacking and giving the man a heart attack were a step beyond blackmail. Second, he didn’t need to point his gun. The guy had taken one look at it down by Hector’s leg, seen me on my knees, and threw the keys and waddled off as fast as he could.
“Get up. We still have a chance to catch the bastard without getting shot in the process.”
He clicked open the lock and climbed behind the wheel. I managed to get into the passenger seat while getting the rest of my breath back. There was the slam of one of the backseat doors, and Meleah had joined us. As Hector started the car and tore out of the parking lot, she fastened her seatbelt before reaching forward to pinch the back of my arm.
“Are you suicidal?” she demanded.
