Chapter 25
Tucker Jackson hadn’t moved. He still looked in bad shape, and there was a cloud of blackflies buzzing all around him and around the bloody piece of pant leg I’d cut away from his wound. But his relief at seeing his daughter was obvious.
“Hey, Daddy. They’re letting you go,” Leticia said as she knelt beside him.
“I don’t understand.” He looked from his daughter to me.
“The deal she struck,” I explained. “She’ll get them what they want up that cliff face, but only if they let you go first.”
He eyed the Kennedy brothers. “I’m not leaving my daughter.”
“You’ve got no choice, buddy,” Ollie said, still pressing his hand to the bloody scrape he’d got when he tried to scale Devil’s Bottom.
“A man’s always got a choice,” Tucker said.
“Choose wisely,” Stan advised, sounding a little like Yoda.
“Tell you what,” Ollie said. “Why don’t I have a little fun with your girl while you take your time in deciding.”
He reached out, grabbed Leticia, and yanked her to her feet. Then he drew her roughly to him and, as she fought him, mashed his lips to hers.
Tucker tried to get up, but his wounded leg failed him.
Instead, I pulled Leticia away and did something I’d been wanting to do all that day.
I threw my fist as hard as I could into Ollie’s fat face.
He stumbled backward, tripped, and went down.
His brother stepped in, the barrel of the Glock aimed at my chest.
“Get back,” he ordered.
I did but kept myself between the brothers and Leticia.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Ollie snarled, struggling to his feet.
“No, you’re not,” Stan said.
“The hell I’m not.”
Ollie started for me. Then, to my great surprise, Stan turned the gun on him, and spit out, “Cool it, goddamn it, or I swear I’ll…”
He didn’t finish, but it was enough to stop Ollie in his tracks.
Stan turned his attention to Tucker. “I give you my word no harm’ll come to your daughter if she helps us.”
“Your word? Like that means anything.”
“Or,” Stan said, “I can just shoot you all, and my brother and I will figure some other way to get what we’re after. Now I’ve given you a choice.”
“Do what they say,” I urged Tucker. “I’ll make sure she’s okay.”
He gave his head a faint shake. I couldn’t tell whether he didn’t believe me or was simply seeing the dead end we were at.
“You harm my daughter, I’ll hunt you down, I swear to God I will.” His voice was pure animal menace.
“She keeps her part of the bargain, she’s got nothing to worry about,” Stan said.
If Tucker believed the man, he would have been the most na?ve guy on the face of the earth.
But he really had no choice. And I thought I could see the wheels of his brain at work.
If he left and was out of sight of these yahoos, he might still be able to come up with a way to help.
That’s what I would have been thinking anyway.
Tucker waited a beat too long, and Ollie said, “Hell, shoot him in the other leg.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Look, I was sheriff of Tamarack County for years.”
“A cop, just like I figured,” Ollie said. “There was something about you I didn’t like from the beginning.”
“My point is this,” I went on. “I know how cops work. You left your half brother dead on Shrike Lake. If I found him, others will. The law will identify his body, they’ll start putting things together, and eventually they’ll zero in on you. What makes you think you can get away with any of this?”
Which caused Ollie to grin ear to ear. “By the time they get here, we’ll be long gone, safe in paradise.”
I didn’t know where paradise was, but the goon seemed pretty sure about it.
“Only if you can get yourselves out of this wilderness,” I said. “And you can’t do that without me.”
“We could find our own way,” Ollie boasted.
But Stan, with the greater wattage in the bulb of his brain, said, “That’s why we’ll keep you alive. And why we’ll let the girl go. We all win in the end.”
He sounded like a used car salesman trying to palm off a lemon. But there was enough logic in it, apparently, to convince Tucker.
“I’ll go,” he said. “But remember. Any harm to my daughter and I’ll hunt you down.”
“So we have a deal?” Stan said.
Tucker spent a long time looking into the face of his daughter before he said, “Deal.”
“You’ll let my father take our canoe?” Leticia asked.
“We’re not giving this man shit,” Ollie said. “He walks out.”
“In his condition, that could be a death sentence,” I said.
“Give my father our canoe,” Leticia said, this time a demand.
Ollie snarled at his brother, “See? Give ’em an inch and what happens?”
“No canoe,” Stan said. “We need plenty of time to get clear of this place before anyone comes looking. He walks, just like the Indian did.”
“Enough!” Tucker said through gritted teeth. “I’ll walk.” He looked my way. “Give me a hand.” After I’d helped him to his feet, he took his daughter in his arms, and as he hugged her, whispered something into her ear. He stepped away from her and said to me, “Keep her safe.”
“I will.”
There was only one way out of Devil’s End on foot. Tucker Jackson began to head up the portage that paralleled the cascades, the same route Cordell Bishop had followed; Tucker was going just about as painfully slowly as Cordell had.
“Okay,” Stan said to Leticia. “You’ve got a promise to keep, girl. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you, then I’ll go after your father and shoot him.”
“You’ll get what you want. Then you have a promise to keep, too,” she reminded him.
But she eyed the brothers as if she knew that in all probability neither man had ever spoken a true word in his entire life.