Chapter 5 #2
Then I sat at the kitchen table, drank my rum, and tried to ignore the blinding pain in my hand.
Wayne came to like a stampede, bellowing and thrashing against the ropes.
I sat across from him and let him burn through it.
His eyes went to Bruce on the floor before they found me, and what happened in his face was something I hadn’t bargained for. Grief. Actual grief, raw and enormous. Never thought I’d see that on one of these assholes.
For a moment, I almost felt bad about that.
Almost.
Then I remembered who these guys were and that they’d come here to kill me.
Fuckers.
“Calm down,” I said. “You keep thrashing like that, you’ll strangle yourself to death.”
He roared and mumbled through the gag.
“What’s that?” I leaned forward, looking right into his bloodshot eyes. “Got something to say?”
He thrashed and twisted.
“You bit off my damn finger, asshole.”
Stupid bastard wasn’t listening.
I held up the knife where he could see it. “Settle down, or I’ll cut off one of your fingers. See how you like it.”
I glanced around the floor. Where the hell did the top of my finger go? Probably under the fridge with the gun. I almost laughed. NCIS would have a field day with this crime scene.
Wayne made a noise. Is he crying?
Right. Time to move this along.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” I said. “I’m gonna take that gag out, and you’re gonna tell me exactly what I want to know, or I’ll start cuttin’ pieces off you. Your choice.”
I pulled the gag from his mouth.
“You’re dead.” His voice was wrecked raw. “You hear me? Dead.”
“Funny. Don’t feel dead yet.” I tapped the blade against his cheek. “Who sent you?”
“Go to hell.” He strained at the rope hard enough that his entire body lifted off the floor. “I’ll rip your bloody—”
“Wayne.” I kept my voice flat. “I’ve got the knife, and you’re hog-tied. Think carefully about what I can cut off, ‘cause there ain’t a damn thing you can do to stop me.”
He breathed. Long, ragged pulls of air, eyes fixed on his brother.
“Who sent you?” I asked, easing back a notch.
Silence.
I picked up the broken bottle neck and pushed it into his cheek.
Wayne’s eyes bulged, and he tried to pull away but couldn’t move an inch. “Bob. Fucking Bob Ackerman,” he said through his teeth. “You already know it’s Bob.”
“And what? You two idiots came to kill me because he told you to?”
“No, dickhead. We were told to bring you in.” The words came out like they tasted bad. He strained against the ropes again, eyes filling with tears. “There’s a hundred grand bounty on your head, and we got first shot at it.”
A hundred grand! Cheap bastard. Bob could’ve offered a million.
“And now you killed Bruce.” His voice cracked. “You killed my brother for nothing!”
I sat back and looked at him for a long moment.
Well, ain’t that interesting.
Bob wanted me alive. They’d come to bring me in, not put me in the ground.
I turned that over and looked at it from a few angles. Bob wanted me breathing, which meant he wanted something he couldn’t get from a corpse.
The money. He knows I took his cash.
And he wants it back.
I almost smiled.
“He tell you why?”
Wayne snarled. “He told us you stole his fucking money, you dumb bastard,” Wayne said. “Told us to bring you in, and he’d sort the rest.”
Sort the rest. Right. I knew what that meant. I’d live long enough to tell Bob where the money was and then die however Bob planned to sort the rest.
I stood. My gut was grinding like machinery, and my arms were trembling as if I’d been mustering all day. But, fuck me, I was still alive. That’s what mattered.
“When did Bob figure out I took it?”
Wayne stared at me, then at Bruce’s lifeless body, and he let out such a big breath he seemed to deflate. “How the fuck should I know?”
I crouched down in front of him. “Last question. Then I’m done with you.”
He looked at me with pure, cold hatred.
“Is anyone else comin’ for me?”
Wayne hocked a bloody glob off his lip. His eyes went half-wild, half-broken, fixed on his brother dead on the floor.
“You don’t get it, do ya, you stupid old bastard.
” His voice came out wrecked. “Bob ain’t done with you when he gets his money.
All you Branson bastards are gonna pay for what you did.
Your boys are gonna get what’s coming to ‘em, and that Cassidy bitch is gonna get it, too. And it’s all your fault. ”
I went still.
My boys were the only thing I’d made in sixty-three bloody years that counted. The only Bransons left after I was gone. They had to keep Koolaroo running to continue the Branson legacy.
And Bob Ackerman was gonna put them in the ground.
I’d spent months planning how my life was gonna end, and weeks in this house writing about my life and what I’d done. Making sure my legacy was straight. Detailing what I’d sacrificed for Koolaroo so my sons would know how important it was to keep that place going.
No way was fucking Bob taking my sons.
I’m gonna kill that bastard.
Wayne spat again. “You’re gonna rot in fuckin’ jail, old man.”
“I ain’t never goin’ in the slammer.”
He opened his mouth to yell, and I shoved the bloody dishcloth back into his fat gob.
“You’re gonna die with your dumb ass brother. Ain’t that justice.” I straightened up, towering over the asshole who’d always liked to use his height against me.
He thrashed against the ropes, and that loop around his neck got tighter. No need to kill him. He’ll kill himself soon enough.
My finger stung like a bitch as I pulled the duffel bag full of cash out of the cupboard.
I stuffed three grocery bags with supplies: rum, bread and sausages from the freezer, Tim Tams, and painkillers—whatever I could grab fast with one good hand.
I grabbed my shotgun and the car keys and started hauling everything down to Willy’s car.
My mind careened back to Kat. That girl Bob, Donny, and I killed way back in the seventies. She used to say she had nine lives. She’d been wrong. She’d only had one. Same as everyone.
But after what I’d been through the last few weeks, maybe I had a few to spare after all.
What we’d done to Kat had been the glue that had bound Bob, Donny, and me together. That single moment had changed all three of our lives.
Bob had thought he was our leader. Bet he’d never thought I’d cross him.
Asshole.
It took three trips to haul everything out to Willy’s car, and by the end of it, I was damn near done, sweating through my shirt, gut screaming, and my hand throbbing so bad I could feel my pulse in the missing finger.
Each time I came back through that door, I half expected Wayne to have strangled himself with the rope.
He hadn’t. Stubborn bastard.
I took a moment to study the Henderson brothers. Those two bastards had given me decades of bullshit.
Pity I wouldn’t get to enjoy life without them around.
Made me wonder where Lyle was. That scrawny runt never went far without these two. Him I could handle easily enough. Hell, after taking down two men twice my size with one good hand and cancer eating me from the inside, maybe I was damn near invincible after all.
Wayne yelled at me, but I couldn’t understand a bloody word through that cloth in his mouth. He strained against the rope, breathing hard through his nose, eyes wild.
Certain he was going to die right there next to his brother, I picked up the bulk pack of dunny paper and went out the back door, pulling it shut behind me.
I paused on the steps and studied the yard. The frangipani leaves moved in the warm night air. The dog up the road had finally shut up. Wayne moaned, but it was barely a noise through the walls.
I backed the car out and jumped out to shut the garage door, leaving the place looking exactly like it had for years.
At the end of the driveway, I glanced up and down the street. It was dark and empty in both directions. I paused there a moment, hand throbbing, gut churning, the warm night pressing in around me.
I pulled out slowly, keeping the headlights off until I hit the intersection at the end of the road. I kept checking the rearview mirror.
Nothing.
But somewhere out there, Bob was sitting by his phone, waiting for the Henderson brothers to haul me in.
He’d be waiting a long time.
Bob would figure out where I was headed soon enough. That cave was our secret. He’d come for me himself next time, and unlike those two dipshits on Willy’s kitchen floor, Bob would come prepared.
But I’d be ready. It was about time we had a real showdown.
I was halfway back to Koolaroo when I remembered my pages in Willy’s Chivas box on the sideboard.
Fuck it.
Every page revealed secrets I’d been forced to keep.
Them bastards are gonna choke on ‘em.
Especially Bob.