is nothing like mine. Mine’s all soft and boring. You mom, well, she’d shoot the nuts off a squirrel if she felt like it.”
Lissy giggled. “She had to be tough, since it was just her. I thought Mama was going to shoot you when she found a pair of your shorts under my bed.”
Victor remembered that day, remembered how he’d protected Lissy, taking all responsibility—after all, he was five years older, which made Lissy only a kid—but her mom knew her daughter, and that was why, he was convinced, she didn’t shoot him and bury him in the deep woods behind the house. She just ordered him out, which was had enough.
The three years he worked for that bush-league home-security company in Winnett had been boredom punctuated with bursts of huge happiness when Lissy e-mailed him. He said, his voice hoarse with the memory of her absence, “I didn’t see you for too long, Lissy I nearly went crazy without you. Then your mom called me up to ask me if I’d like to rob banks.”
“Yeah, I talked her into it. I told her you could drive the car. She said that was fine since you were a pussy.”
“I’m not a pussy, dammit!”
“All right, all right,” she said, her voice soft, dreamy. “Do you re-member how we’d get under a sheet and play, my flashlight on?”
The memory made him jerk the steering wheel. He thought about those horrible hours when he didn’t know if she was alive, deadening hours when he’d lurked on the surgical floor, listening to the FBI agents speaking to the nurses and doctors about her. He went to the men’s room and vomited when he heard she was going to be all right. He said, “No pussy could have gotten you out of that damned hospital. Don’t you remember that big FBI agent sitting outside your door? Well, I fooled him good, didn’t I?”
“You saved me,” she said, her eyes closed, her hands over her belly, gently kneading. “I love you, Victor.”
He felt a fist squeeze his heart. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s good, real good. Why don’t we just leave now? Why do we have to hang around? I’m thinking I’d like to visit Hollywood, maybe see Angelina, learn how to surf, make love on the beach.”
Her eyes popped open. “Victor, I’ve gotta kill that old man, blow his brains from here to Oregon. He murdered Mama. I can’t let that go. And that FBI agent, Dillon Savich.” She started rubbing her belly harder now, her hand jerking. “What he did to me, what he did, I can’t let him get away with that, I can’t.”
“All right, we’ll kill those two, then get out of here. Give your mouth a rest. I’ll wake you up when we get to Fort Pessel. Go to sleep.”
Four minutes later Victor heard a siren. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a police car, lights flashing, closing fast. He felt a punch of panic, then rage. Why was this jerk on him? He hadn’t done anything wrong. No way did they know this was a stolen car. Too soon for that.
He took a deep breath and slowly pulled the Impala over to the side of the road. It simply wasn’t possible somebody had already discovered the old woman’s body and reported her frigging car stolen. His hands felt cold and clammy. He hated it. He rubbed his hands on his jeans, breathed deeply, calmed his pulsing heart.
Sheriff’s Deputy Davie Franks shined a flashlight into the young man’s face as Victor lowered the window. “Nice wheels you got,” he said. “I had me an old Impala like this when I was about your age. You got a driver’s license to show me?”
“What’s the problem, officer?”
“You’ve got a busted taillight.”
Davie Franks shined his flashlight over on the girl, whose head was back against the lowered seat, her eyes closed. He said, “She sick?”
Victor said, “A case of the summer flu. She’s been puking, but she’ll be okay now.”
“May I see your driver’s license?”
Deputy Franks watched the young man hesitate, then reach for his wallet. He glanced again over at the young girl. Her eyes were open now and she was staring at him, her eyes sort of glazed. Was she really sick or high on drugs?
As he took the driver’s license, he asked, “Where are you kids going?”
“I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-one,” said Victor. “My cousin and I were visiting relatives in Richmond and we’re going home now. Like I said she’s got a touch of the flu.”
“Where’s home?”
“Fort Pessel. Look, Officer, I’ll get the taillight fixed as soon as I get home.”
Davie shined his flashlight on the license, read the name, checked the photo, then said aloud, “Victor Alessio Nesser. You from the Middle East?”
“You don’t look Jordanian—I guess your mom was the blond, passed it on to you. Good thing for you. Always lots of trouble over there—” Davie glanced once again at the girl, then back down at the driver’s license photo; his eyes snapped alert with recognition and he jumped back, his hand going for his gun. “Get out of the car—”
But Davie didn’t have time to get his gun clear of its holster or to finish his sentence. Lissy brought her hand up smooth and fast and shot him between the eyes. He was grabbing for the door, but he was dead before his fingers touched the handle.
“Hey, what’s going on? Davie!”
“Well, look at this—another one,” Lissy said.
Victor opened the driver’s-side door, leaned down low, and waited for the female deputy to get close. She was talking into a cell phone, her urgent and her gun out. She saw his gun and yelled, “Stop!”
Victor shot her in the chest.
She dropped her gun and grabbed her chest, blood oozing out between her fingers, looked down at her partner staring back at her, a hole in his forehead, and said, “Why’d you shoot us?”
“You got in my face,” Victor said, and watched her collapse to the ground, maybe two feet from her partner.
“Check her, Victor. Make sure she’s dead.”
Victor got out of the car, looked down into the glazed eyes of the young freckle-faced woman who lay at his feet, her chest covered with her blood, blood snaking out of her mouth. Her cell phone was on the ground beside her, and he heard a man’s voice yelling, “What’s happening? Talk to me, Gail!”
Victor kicked the cell phone across the road.
“Is she dead?”
Deputy Gail Lynd tried to look for her gun but couldn’t move. She stared at the man—a boy, really—who’d shot her. She watched him turn and yell to someone in the car, “Shut your yap, Lissy. She’s not quite dead yet, but she will be soon.”
He looked back down at her, met her eyes, dumb with pain. She saw the buzz of excitement in him and doubted there was mercy there. Lissy called out, “Pay attention, Victor. My mama said you gotta shoot ‘em between the eyes, put their lights out right away. That way there’s no one hanging around, surviving, telling stories about you before they take their boat ride to hell. So stop your hee-hawing and put out her damned lights!”
“Yeah, yeah, all right.” Victor leaned down close and winked at the deputy as she whispered, “No, please, don’t kill—”
He fired. A chunk of concrete flew into the air not six inches from her face. She stared up at him.
He winked at her again.
Gail heard a mad cheer come from the car, then a yell: “Put a notch in that boy’s belt!”
