“Jake?” he calls as he hurries across the patio toward the moaning and spies his partner’s bloodied face peering up at him from the bushes. Max kneels beside Jake and rests a hand on his shoulder. “Who’s the runner?” he asks as his eyes stray back to the driveway.
“No idea,” Jake whispers hoarsely. “Carrying someone. Brittany? Warn Tony.”
Max pulls out his cell phone and calls Tony. “You’re about to have company. Bad guy carrying a girl coming your way.”
“Brittany?” Tony asks.
“Could be. Keep your head down!”
Tony’s reply is unintelligible. “Got it?” Max asks impatiently. Tony’s whispered reply sends a chill through Max before he tucks the phone back into his pocket. Then he leans in closer to get a good look at Jake. Blood glistens on his partner’s ashen face and coats his chest.
Jake holds up his cell phone and waves Max away. “I’m calling 911,” he mutters. “Go!”
Max takes off after the guy carrying the girl. The man has a healthy head start. I wish to hell I hadn’t shot the fuckin’ tires out, Max thinks bitterly as he runs past the pickup truck and spies his prey a couple of hundred yards ahead. Fucker’s probably twenty years younger than me.
I pull into position C, as instructed by Jake. I tuck the Journey into yet another little grove of trees and bushes, this one a dozen or so yards up the lengthy driveway leading from the road to the farmhouse. My instructions are to keep my head down and duck low beneath the dashboard to use the van’s engine for protection if shots come from up the road. I have no role to play until Jake and Max need the vehicle brought up to the house or they meet me here.
Gunfire erupts from the direction of the farmhouse—booming explosions with a string of sharper little pops mixed in. Jake’s and Max’s shots would be the little pops. Handgun pops. The majority of the gunfire is from the bigger guns. It’s heavier. Faster. Even from here, I can feel the damned blasts. It’s all over in twenty or thirty seconds.
A quick glance at my phone shows no new messages from Jake. Or Max.
Now that whatever mayhem was taking place up there has ended, a message from one of them would be welcome. Are they okay? I sit still for a couple of seconds, mindful of Jake’s orders to keep my head down while I await instructions. None come. We didn’t discuss this possibility. I lift my head above the dashboard and look in the direction of the house, but can’t see a damned thing through the tree branches and surrounding shrubbery. I ease the door open, step out, and rise to my full height to peer above the foliage. The vegetation still hampers the view, so I push deeper into the bushes and part a few branches. The roof of the house is visible in the moonlight above a rise in the driveway that obscures a view of the rest of the house and its surroundings.
The phone in my pocket finally vibrates. I duck down and pull it free, fully expecting to find a text letting me know that the excitement is over and it’s time to bring the Journey. Instead, it’s a voice call from Max.
He’s talking rapidly before I get the phone all the way up to my ear. He sounds agitated, saying something about a bad guy and a girl headed my way.
“Brittany?” I ask stupidly.
“Could be,” Max mutters. He’s out of breath.
What the hell is going on? I wonder in the same moment that I hear footsteps approaching, crunching on the gravel. Whoever it is, he’s coming fast. I don’t hear what Max says next as I duck back into the van and pull out the shotgun.
“Got it?” Max asks when I put the phone back to my ear.
“He’s coming,” I whisper before cutting the connection and dropping the phone into a pocket. I hold the gun awkwardly across my body and take a sideways step closer to the drive as the pounding footsteps move steadily closer.
Only one set of footsteps? Didn’t Max say that a guy and a girl were coming? The footfalls I hear are heavy. The guy, then. Where’s the girl?
I duck down when a bobbing head appears above the rise in the road. I’m confused by the silhouette for several seconds. Then I work out that I’m watching a man—an extremely large man—sprinting right at me with someone draped over his shoulders. One hand is wrapped around the legs of the person he’s carrying. The other is holding an arm that dangles across his chest.
Which means his stomach is unprotected when I step into the drive and bury the muzzle of the shotgun in his midriff. I hope I’ve run the shotgun barrel clean through the son of a bitch. Air explodes out of his lungs as he slams into me. I realize it’s Joe just before his forehead slams into my face. As we rocket backward in a tangle of bodies and limbs, I inadvertently squeeze the trigger. The blast of the shotgun is deafening. Then the back of my head slams into the packed rock of the driveway and the world goes black.
BOOM!!!
“Oh fuck, no!” Max exclaims as he drives one foot after the other in the wake of whoever was bearing down on Tony’s location. Silence replaces the startling explosion, save for the sound of Max’s footsteps and his wheezing while he struggles to suck in enough oxygen to keep propelling himself forward.
Shotgun for sure. Did the mob fucker have one? Max has no idea. Surely, Tony didn’t open fire. I told him the bad guy was
