laugh drifted up to us, but that was it.
“Can I just pick ’em off?” Carter asked. “One by one?”
“That would probably be Plan Z.”
“What’s Plan A?”
“We lie here and see what happens.”
He glanced at me. “You are so boring.”
“One of my best qualities.”
“Said the really boring guy.”
“Shut up.”
Carter scanned the area. “See your guys anywhere?”
“Nope.”
“How much am I getting paid for this?”
“Same as always.”
He paused. “You’ve never paid me before.”
“Exactly.”
He dropped his head to the tarp and closed his eyes. “Wake me when I can turn this place into a shooting gallery.”
Ten minutes later, he was snoring softly, earning every cent of what I wasn’t paying him.
I watched what went on down below. They stuck together in groups of two or three, talking, laughing, occasionally goofing off with a shove or a fake punch. Most of them appeared to be in their early twenties and it easily could’ve been mistaken for a frat party.
Except for their cue-ball heads and the pile of guns.
After an hour of squinting to make out their tattoos, counting the empty beer cans, and stacking close to a hundred pine needles on Carter’s cheek, I was ready to give up.
I pushed back from the ledge and sat up, stretching the numb muscles in my back and arms. I started to stand up to unkink my legs when I heard a couple of shouts down below and what sounded like the hum of a car engine.
I dropped down to my stomach and slid back to the ledge.
The group was moving slowly over to the area of trees where the trucks were parked. The front end of another vehicle nosed up next to the ones I’d seen before.
My shoulders stiffened as Lonnie emerged from the truck and walked into the circle.
He high-fived several of the guys as a greeting, smiling and nodding confidently.
I pulled one of the Ruger rifles closer to me.
I reached over and punched Carter in the arm. “Hey.”
He lifted his head up with a start, then frowned as the pile of pine needles fell off his face and down around his shirt collar.
He started brushing them off. “What?”
I nodded down at the campground. “Guy in the black T-shirt. That’s one of them.”
The anger that had visited me twice before when I’d encountered Lonnie was knocking in my stomach.
Carter stared down below for a moment. “Where’s the other guy?”
My fingers tingled. “Haven’t seen Mo yet.”
The way Lonnie interacted with his buddies, the way he moved among them, the way they all wanted to say hello to him, it was clear that he was a leader.
I reached out and placed my hand on the rifle.
“Hang on,” Carter said, now fully awake, reacting to my movement. “Let’s see what goes down.”
Lonnie threw his head back, his laugh working into the air and up to us. I could see black stitching across his nose, courtesy of my having slammed it into the floor at my house.
My hand closed around the rifle’s stock.
Lonnie turned back toward the trucks and the trees.
“Dude,” he yelled. “Come on.” There was more laughter in the group.
Carter glanced at me. I looked at him and shrugged. Then I focused back to the trees as a movement caught my attention.
Mo emerged from the pines, a sort of neo-Nazi Bigfoot. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt, his arms bulging with muscle. A bandage poked out of the shirt near his shoulder where I’d shot him. The canvas pants on his lower half hugged his tree-trunk-like legs.
“Fuck,” Carter said. “He is big.”
Mo was pulling a rope. It was taut and angled down toward the ground as if it were tied to something.
Lonnie motioned for him to hurry up, excitedly, to keep pulling the rope.
“He go deer hunting or something?” Carter asked. “What the hell’s he got on the end of that?”
I watched.
Mo tugged on the rope and glanced behind him. Then he looked back toward the group, leaned forward a little, and started pulling the rope like a trained mule.
I could make out something at the end, sliding heavily through the tree trunks and pine needles.
The group started whooping and hollering, celebrating like a team that had just won a championship.
The end of the rope came into view and I felt myself rising up on my elbows, my mind not believing what it was seeing, my hand clamping down on the rifle.
“Motherfucker,” Carter whispered.
They had gone hunting, alright.
Hands bound, gagged at the mouth, Mo’s rope tied tightly around her ankles, Malia Moreno was their trophy.
Thirty-three
“Is that Moreno’s sister?” Carter asked, his voice edged with surprise.
“Yeah,” I said, the muscles at my neck coiling into knots as I slid my eye to the scope for a closer look.
Malia’s eyes were wide, fear radiating from them. Dirt caked the sides of her face, held there by streams of tears. Blood leaked out of her nose and the corners of her mouth. She was wearing a tank top and one of the straps had been torn. She wasn’t fighting Mo or the rope, her body sliding along the ground like a bag of sand.
“We gotta get closer,” I said, sliding back and rising to my knees.
Carter pushed away from the ledge and popped to his feet like he was riding his surfboard. “Work from opposite sides?”
I nodded, reaching for one of the rifles. “Try to stay just above them. I’ll get to the ground and take the ones closest to her. You take the others. Try to herd them to their trucks and get them to run.”
He grabbed the remaining rifle, stuffed several of the extra magazines into his pockets, pivoted, and disappeared into the trees.
I took the rest of the magazines and moved quickly through the trees in the opposite direction and down the slope, staying close enough to the edge to monitor the campground.
Malia was near the fire ring now, the skinheads in a semicircle around her. She was attempting to move, rolling around like a wounded insect. Several of the skinheads moved toward her like they were going to kick her, then held up at the last second, laughing as she tried to roll out of reach. Mo dropped the rope and headed to the back of the crowd.
When I reached level ground, I was about twenty-five yards away from Malia and the assholes.
“Boys, check it out,” Lonnie said, standing near Malia’s head. “Got ourselves a pretty little porch monkey here.”
Their cheers and jeers melded together, exploding into the air.
Lonnie squatted down. “And there’s nothing I like better than putting a motherfucking little porch monkey out of her misery.”
