“Angelo Benedetti. Vincent’s kid.”
“So what am I missing, Vincent’s kid?”
“They know about you. My father, the FBI, the sheriff here. They put it all together. You’ve lost the pot, friend.” Benedetti gave his shoulders a shrug as if it were the end of a game they’d all been playing strictly for the fun of it.
“I’m not your friend, you sow-littered wop.”
Raye fired. Angelo Benedetti stumbled back from the impact and toppled over the chair in which he’d been sitting. At the same moment, the door to the trailer flew open. Cork rushed in and threw a blow with his good right arm. He caught Arkansas Willie Raye hard on the side of the head before the man could turn. Raye went down. Jo stomped on Arkansas Willie’s hand, then pried the pistol loose from his fingers. She stood up, breathing hard.
“Oh God, Cork. I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
Cork touched his shoulder gently. Knocking Willie Raye down had hurt. “I could hear him ranting from halfway across the yard. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
Shiloh had moved quickly to Benedetti’s side. “Somebody get a doctor here.”
“I don’t think so.”
Shiloh looked up. A figure had stepped into the doorway, dark against the brilliant sun outside, the face lost in deep shadow. Even so, Shiloh knew who it was-or at least what he called himself. Charon.
50
“ Put the gun back on the floor.” The man called Charon motioned with the big automatic he held in his hand. “Do it slowly.”
Jo did as she was instructed. “Who are you?”
He ignored her question and looked down at Arkansas Willie Raye who was gathering himself in an effort to stand. Raye touched his head where Cork’s blow had connected, and he grimaced. “I thought you were going to cover me from the outside.” He eased himself up.
“You’re covered.”
Raye took his pistol from the floor and scowled. He appeared about to speak, but instead, he lashed out and struck Cork on the side of the head with the gun barrel.
The blow turned Cork, wrenched his shoulder, and he cried out. His ear rang afterward, and his jaw felt like Arkansas Willie had hammered a nail through the bone.
“Now you got a mornin’-after headache, too, you son of a bitch. What the hell’re you doin’ here anyway?”
Talking wasn’t easy, but he replied through gritted teeth, “We figured you out, Willie.”
“You’re the one I had pinned down back there at Hell’s Playground.” The man called Charon looked Cork over intently. His eyes were hard brown. There was something old about them, though not particularly wise. “How did you get here?”
“Ran mostly,” Cork replied.
“When you came down the road out there, I saw you holding yourself like you were hurt.”
“Dislocated shoulder.”
The man’s interest deepened and his face seemed to shift as if the very structure beneath had altered. “You ran out of those woods with a dislocated shoulder?”
“It was dislocated for only half the way.”
Raye butted in. “Let’s get on with what we came here for and get out.”
“Angelo Benedetti told you the truth,” Jo said. Cork was amazed how calm she sounded. “Killing us does no good now. Everyone’s looking in your direction, Willie. And those men in the Boundary Waters know about you. You have no alibi.”
“Shut up.” Raye jabbed the gun at her.
“Is that true?” The man called Charon focused on Jo so intensely she felt as if her thoughts were being pierced.
“You must be Milwaukee,” she said.
“Son of a gun.” Milwaukee looked at Arkansas Willie wistfully. “I do believe they’re on to you.”
“No evidence,” Raye said hastily. “This gun is untraceable. I go back into the woods, who’s to say I wasn’t lost out there the whole time?”
“Don’t do this, Willie,” Shiloh said. “Good people are going to suffer.”
Milwaukee looked at her and it appeared as if a smile almost touched his lips. “I thought going out there would be a picnic. I was wrong about you. And I’m not often wrong.”
With his pistol, Raye frantically motioned toward Shiloh, who still knelt beside the fallen Angelo Benedetti. “Everyone over there.”
No one moved.
“Do it,” Milwaukee said. There was death in his voice, deep and empty as a waiting grave. “This man’s paid for the game. We play the cards however he deals them.” He leveled his automatic at Jo’s heart.
Cork stepped next to Jo and stood with his shoulder pressed against hers. He tried to think what he could say that would alter the trajectory of that moment. But his mouth was dry and his voice was caught somewhere between his intention and his tongue, and all he could do was stand there as the barrel moved toward him like a compass needle that had found north and the man called Charon and Milwaukee poised himself on the edge of an act that would send them all plummeting into unknowable dark.
“Shoot him,” Raye shrieked.
Milwaukee hesitated.
“I said shoot him, you chickenshit bastard. Or I will.”
Raye swung his own gun toward Cork.
Milwaukee lashed out faster than Cork had ever seen a man move. He grabbed Arkansas Willie’s arm and twisted it at an unnatural angle so that the gun dropped from his hand. Then he delivered a sharp, precise kick to the side of Raye’s right knee and the bone or cartilage gave an audible pop. Raye crumpled to the floor. Milwaukee did all this without the barrel of the automatic he held veering in the slightest degree from its dead-on aim at Cork’s heart.
Arkansas Willie clutched his knee and stared up at Charon/Milwaukee with pain and anger and disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“I won’t take disrespect from any man.”
“It’s broken,” Raye whined.
“Consider yourself lucky.”
“I paid you.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “When I see you in hell, we’ll talk about a refund.”
In no more time than it took to strike a match, everything had changed. Cork looked at the hard brown eyes and wondered what it was that made the man kill or decide not to. It didn’t matter. If Cork had to live forever not knowing why, he could do that.
“You think you’re out of this?” Raye screamed. “You think you can just walk away? They know who you are.”
“No, they only know a name. I have lots of those.”
Milwaukee bent and picked up the pistol Raye had let fall to the floor. As he straightened, he noted the consternation in the eyes of Cork and the others. “I prefer to let you live,” he said simply. He backed toward the door and stepped outside into the sunlight. He looked up, squinting, then into the dark of the trailer. “?Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.?” He turned and, as if he’d walked through a doorway into another dimension, vanished.
“What was that all about?” Jo asked.
