They waited in silence as the man approached.
‘Start the car,’ Eric’s voice crackled energy, as though the exhaustion of the past several hours was forgotten. ‘Pull out into the street.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
Luke started the engine and pulled out onto the street. The homeless man was forty feet ahead of them, walking on the left.
‘I have to be sure,’ Eric said to himself. ‘Stay close. But not too close.’
Luke stopped the BMW at a light. The homeless man kept walking, stare fixed ahead on the buckling sidewalk.
The light flashed green.
‘Go,’ Eric ordered.
Luke drove the car, closed the gap on the homeless man. They drove past him and the man glanced up.
‘Drive another block then go back,’ Eric ordered.
Luke U-turned at the next light and now the passenger side window was closer to the homeless man. Eric studied his quarry.
‘It’s him,’ Eric said. ‘Okay. Be cool, be cool.’
Luke wasn’t sure if Eric was talking to him, or to himself.
The homeless man raised his head as he walked on in his broken shuffle. He wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. Another man waited at the street corner, leaning against the traffic light, turning to watch as both the first man and the BMW approached. The second man – dressed in a leather jacket with a colorful bald eagle stitched on the back, jeans and heavy dark sunglasses unnecessary at night – seemed to sense trouble rising; he turned and ran into the shadows of an alley at top speed, glancing once over his shoulder. Luke saw naked fear on his broad, scarred face.
‘That guy in the eagle jacket was going to talk to the homeless man,’ Luke said. He was not sure why he said this thought aloud, but he had seen a smile of expectation rise and then fade in the second man’s face. Luke had the sense they were interrupting something – a rendezvous or an appointment. The homeless man stopped as the leather-jacketed man rushed away from the scene.
They drew level with the homeless man and he paused as the BMW crawled to a stop, Eric lowering the window.
The homeless man took an awkward step forward into the pool of light.
Then he turned and began to hurry away. Walking with purpose, digging into his pocket.
‘Follow him,’ Eric ordered with a hard jab of the gun into Luke’s tender ribs.
The homeless man broke into a run. He cut across the street toward the parking lot of a bank. The building looked new, the foothold into the neighborhood for the revitalized edge of downtown.
‘Catch up with him. I have to talk to him,’ Eric said.
The homeless man ran toward the narrow, empty drive-through lanes, toward the soft glow of the ATM machine.
‘Cut him off, don’t let him get away,’ Eric said.
Luke cut the BMW between the homeless man and the building. He glided into the ATM lane and slammed to a stop; the driver’s side was close to the ATM, the passenger side fronting the running man. The homeless guy rocked on his heels, and then lurched to retreat the other way.
The gun left Luke’s ribs.
‘No!’ he yelled but Eric leaned out the window and fired. Three loud pops. The homeless man jerked, fell, collapsed in a huddle. The back of his head welled bone and blood.
Luke lunged at Eric’s arm, at the gun; he stepped off the brake and the BMW lurched past the ATM. Eric socked his elbow back hard and Luke’s head snapped into the driver’s window. Pain lashed his nose, his face. The gun, warm from duty, pressed against the side of his throat.
Eric turned, held up his phone with the other hand, and snapped a photo of the dead man. He closed the phone and jabbed the gun harder against Luke’s throat.
‘Oh, God, you shot him,’ Luke whispered.
‘Drive fast. Now.’
Luke drove, his hands shivering, his whole body numb with shock. He steered back onto the road. The gun was warm against his skin. Holy Jesus. He had just witnessed a murder. Fear pounded an ache in his chest. He wasn’t sure what he felt except that he did not want to die.
‘Get us onto the highway.’ Eric’s voice broke. ‘Go, go.’
‘Which… which one?’ As if it mattered, Luke thought. Eric had just killed a man and Luke knew he was next.
‘Just get us on a highway, get us out of here.’ Eric flipped open his phone. Worked the keypad with his thumb. Then he punched in another number, shaking. He emitted a hard, nervous laugh – an awful mockery of a laugh – and put the cell phone up to his ear.
‘It’s done. He’s dead. I just emailed you the proof. So you tell me where she is.’
Luke felt Eric’s stare come onto his skin. He drove like a robot; he tried to focus on the driving. Where she is.
Eric closed the phone. ‘Get us to Highway 59 and head northeast.’
‘What, so I can drive you to kill someone else?’
‘No. Now we go save a life.’ And, like an old friend, the gun went back against Luke’s ribs.
5
They were well past the city now, past the sprawl of lights and the scattering of outer suburbs and smaller towns, into the denseness of the piney woods. Luke kept a hard grip on the wheel. He badly needed to go to the bathroom and hunger clenched its fist around his stomach. The gas needle hovered toward the red zone of empty.
‘We need to make a gas stop,’ he said.
‘You’ll pull over when I say.’
Two minutes later they came upon a farm to market road, empty of traffic. Beyond its edges, heavy growths of loblolly pines stood like guardians.
‘Drive a ways down the road,’ Eric ordered.
He’s going to kill me now. Whatever strange reason I was useful to him is over and he’s going to kill me. Terror rose in his throat.
‘Stop.’
Luke stopped.
Eric removed the keys from the ignition. ‘Get out of the car. Slowly.’
The last movements his muscles would ever know. Luke obeyed. He’d been stuck behind the wheel, body locked in fear for hours. The night was silent, the stars mute witnesses.
‘You need to pee?’
‘Yes.’ Was this a final kindness? What did it matter?
‘Go on the other side of the car.’ He stuck the gun between Luke’s shoulder blades.
Luke relieved himself. When he was done, Eric steered him toward the trunk. He popped it open with the remote.
‘I’m going to give you a break from driving. But if I hear one peep out of that trunk, you’re dead. As much fun as we’ve had together, I’ll just pretend you’re the guy I killed and it’s boom, you’re done.’ The shakiness was gone from Eric’s voice. He’d said earlier that breaking the law changed you, and now he had broken the greatest law of man. He had taken a life.
‘I know.’ Shivering, Luke climbed into the trunk. The lid slammed down. Darkness. The engine revved. The tires hissed softly on the gravel, and the car backed and pulled into a U-turn.
