“Will you?” he asked derisively. “You do realize who’s holding a gun on you, right?”
She nodded. “Absolutely I do,” she said, “but is that supposed to make a difference to me? I still have a job to do.”
He frowned at her. “I don’t get it,” he said. “How the hell are you not worried?”
“Because you’re still just punks,” she said wearily. “You’re nothing but petty-ass punks.”
“Nothing petty ass about us, bitch,” Johnny said, lifting the rifle in her direction.
The man she was helping to stay upright, who’s name she had already forgotten, looked at Johnny. “You don’t have to shoot her, man.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I do,” he said. “I absolutely do. And don’t worry. You’ll get a bullet too. Because you’re the one who tracked down our buddy here and messed up this deal. He was the one pushing things through for us.”
“It’s not that simple though,” Robert said. “You don’t get things pushed through on just one person’s vote. Did he tell you that he could?”
“Hell yes, he said he could get it done,” Ronnie said.
“Well, I’m sure he was trying his best for you,” Robert said, “but voting still had to happen. Engineering designs still had to be drawn up, environmental planning processes done, and all kinds of shit still had to happen.”
“And he would have made it happen,” Johnny said. “We know him. We know what he’s like and what he’s done before.”
“Maybe so, and now we’ll have to sort through his wretched life to see how much other shit he has pulled.”
“Yeah, well, he’s dead already, so I don’t think it matters.”
“Yet you killed him, and now you can’t get your deal to go through,” Angela said.
“There’ll be somebody else,” Ronnie said confidently. “Every time we go to a new state, somebody’s there who’s willing to take a payout instead of being an honest, upstanding citizen,” he said, with that mocking tone of his. “You should try it sometime.”
“Well, I would say, you should try being an honest citizen for once, but apparently you’re just full of shit,” she said. She had gotten her hand free and clear, but no way could she shoot both of them at the same time. She looked over at the man she’d been helping and said, “Sit down again, Robert,” she said, then propped him up against the rim of the trunk. As she turned around, she pushed him in and fired at Ronnie, then rolled under the vehicle. Robert collapsed into the trunk, neatly folding back inside again, as, from the ground, Angela propped up and went to take another shot, only to see the crane swinging around, knocking Johnny to the ground. She bounded to her feet and ran over and checked on the first one, but her shot was true. She’d taken Ronnie out with a headshot.
As she walked over to the other body, her handgun still out and at the ready, she realized that Johnny was dead too. She looked up at Bonaparte and gave him a thumbs-up. She walked over to Robert and helped him back out again. “You okay?”
He took a long deep breath. “I am now,” he said, “and again I owe you thanks.”
“Well,” she said, “just make sure you make good use of your life at this point.”
He laughed. “I’ve already spent a lifetime putting criminals away. I’m not sure what else I can do.”
“I’m sure you can find more bad guys to topple,” she said, “but let’s make sure this mess comes to a nice neat crisp end.”
“A lot of it’ll have to stay under wraps,” he warned.
She winced. “That’s too bad,” she said. “I get that, in some related cases, it’s necessary, but I really want to make sure all the perpetrators in this mess get caught.”
“What about your deputies?”
“Well, I’ve got a security guard I’ll deputize, and I have Bonaparte here,” she said, “although he won’t stay long-term.”
“That’s too bad,” Robert said, looking up, as Bonaparte climbed down the crane.
“Yeah, except Levi wouldn’t be very happy with me, if I were to steal one of his guys,” she said, with a quick grin.
“Is he one of Levi’s men?”
“He is,” she said. “Levi was good enough to send him to help me.”
“Levi’s a great guy, and he has a top-notch team.”
“Exactly. So, when I got into trouble, they were the first ones I called on.”
“Good choice,” he said. “That makes sense to me.”
She smiled and nodded, as Bonaparte hopped down and finally joined them. “What about your buddy Roscoe up there?” she asked.
“I’ve got him hog-tied. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Good,” she said. “We better go check on Floyd. That gives us two alive, plus the older one in the hospital. I think he’s the evil brothers’ uncle Hector.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a few bits and pieces to pick up around town yet,” Robert said. “But, other than that, Sheriff, you’ve done a pretty damn good job of cleaning up your town.”
She smiled. “I have, haven’t I? Too bad the locals won’t believe me.”
“Oh, I think they will,” Robert said. “You’ll get the credit for this. I’ll make sure.”
“I appreciate that,” she said. “After all, it is an election year.”
He burst out laughing. “I can’t see that anybody will have a problem with this.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “A lot of folks here didn’t want to see a woman elected in the first place.”
“Well, maybe this will change their minds,” he said. “Nobody else could have handled it better.”
As she looked over at Bonaparte, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
Robert smiled and said, “That was a pretty impressive move she made, wasn’t it?”
Bonaparte smiled and said. “That’s one way to put it.”
*
As it was, Bonaparte was still adjusting to his own slamming heart after seeing her caught up behind those two rifles. It had been all he could do to get to the controls and to get that damn crane over them, without them really focusing on it. But once
