Chapter 20
Frank
Lyle’s screaming had dropped down to a steady moan.
He was sprawled on his back near the cave mouth, both hands clamped over the hole in his belly.
The blood was pooling around him in a slow, black spread across the dirt floor.
Gut shots bled differently from any other kind.
Slow. Patient. Like the body knew it had time to bleed out, and there was no rush about it.
I could see him from where I was crouched behind the sandstone shelf. Couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t help him. Didn’t want to anyway.
You chose the wrong side, ya dumb shit.
He hadn’t, really. There hadn’t been a right side for Lyle Henderson the moment Bob had dragged him into this, using his grief and anger to point him at this cave. Lyle was always gonna die on this mission. He just hadn’t figured that part out.
He had now.
Behind the drum, Bob shifted his weight. I caught the scuff of his boot on grit and lined the shotgun up on the spot, but he tucked back into shadow before I could get a shot.
The cave swam.
I blinked hard, and the floor came back into focus, but the edges of everything had a fuzzy halo around them that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago. The pain in my kidneys had climbed up into my chest. My heart was going too fast.
The adrenaline wasn’t pushing the cancer pain down none. It was making it fucking worse.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek ‘til I tasted blood again.
Get your shit together, Frank. Finish him.
“Where’s the rest of my money, Frank?” Bob’s voice was calmer now. Almost chatty. Like Lyle wasn’t dying on the floor behind him. Like we were just two old men having a yarn over the back fence.
“I don’t fuckin’ know.” My good hand shook so hard I had to brace the shotgun on the rock just to keep the muzzle steady.
“Don’t play with me. There was millions stacked in those walls.”
He’s right. There was millions. So who the fuck took it?
Lyle whimpered behind Bob. He doesn’t have much time left. Dying in the dirt is a fucked-up way to go. At least his pain won’t last as long as mine has.
A wave of nausea rolled through me. I swallowed it down and tasted bile and blood.
“Must’ve been your dipshit sons.” Bob’s voice came out as hard as steel. “They stole my cash.”
The cave went cold around me. “Bullshit,” I croaked. “They don’t know nothin’ about that money.”
“Has to be them. They know this land like you do. So, either you took it, or your dumb sons did.”
“Leave ‘em out of it.” I said it too fast. Too loud. He heard my desperation the moment it left my mouth.
Bob heard it, too, and he laughed.
It was the worst sound he’d made all day because that laugh meant he’d figured out how to fuck with me.
“Too late for that, Frank.”
I gripped the shotgun harder. “Too late for what?”
“Too late to leave them out of it. As soon as I’m done with you, I’m going to kill every one of those Branson bastards until somebody hands me my fucking money.”
My heart nearly split open.
I’d been ready to die in this cave. Made peace with it. Built the whole damn plan around it. I’d felt almost calm about the whole thing, ‘cause I’d be the one paying for all our bullshit and none of my sons would.
That was the deal I’d made with myself.
But Bob had just torn it up and pissed on it.
I closed my eyes for one beat, and the cave got heavier around me. When I opened them, I had to wait for the edges to come back.
Mitch.
Declan.
Kayden.
My three sons, who wouldn’t even come to my funeral.
But they were mine. And they were Bransons.
Bob Ackerman wasn’t going to put them in the ground because somebody else had stolen his fucking money.
I shifted my weight against the rock. Warm blood slid down between my fingers where the stitches had let go.
Gotta protect those boys.
“Bob, listen to me.” I forced my voice steady. “Let me help you get your money back, and you can kill me when it’s done. I’ll even load the shotgun for ya. I’m dyin’ anyway.”
A beat of silence.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The cancer. I’m nearly done.”
“What fucking cancer, you dickhead?”
I went still.
He didn’t know?
What the hell?
Fuck me. He hasn’t read the notes I put in the Chivas box on Willy’s sideboard. Nearly every fuckin’ secret Bob and I have buried together since we were teenagers is detailed in that box, including some of the bodies.
I’d written about the cancer in those pages. Detailed my damn pain and bullshit.
If he didn’t know, then he didn’t find them, which meant the notes were still there. Right near the two dead Henderson brothers that would be stinking up Willy’s kitchen by now.
The cops will find the box. The cops will read every page.
Bob was fucked.
He just didn’t know it yet.
The realization went through me like a long, slow swallow of rum on a cold morning, and, for a second, I forgot about my kidneys, my hand, and the bullet hole I was about to wear. I had him. He could kill me in this cave and walk out with the cash in that duffel, and he’d still be finished.
The only thing that mattered now was my boys.
And the only way to save them was to make damn sure Bob was looking over his shoulder for the rest of his miserable fucking life.
Because if Bob knew the cops were coming for him, he’d run. He wouldn’t waste another day of freedom hunting Bransons for a stack of cash he was never gonna get to spend, and my boys would never have to know how close they’d come to being hunted.
That was the play.
I sucked in a breath, and it tore me up inside.
“I’m dyin’, Bob, and I don’t give a shit if you kill me before the cancer does,” I called across the cave. My voice sounded as thin as smoke. “But you’re fucked, too.”
“What are you talking about, you old prick?”
I let him stew, let his cop brain start running through every scenario I could be talking about. “I’ve been writin’ stuff down. All sorts a shit. About you. And me. All that money. And Kat, the girl who’s buried under the barrel you’re hiding behind.”
The silence that came back at me was a different silence than before. It felt fucking heavy. I could hear Bob breathing behind that damn drum.
“Every fuckin’ thing.” I pictured him fuming, and I smiled.
“Every job you ever gave me. Every body we put in the ground. Kat was the first. Then there was that other girl, the one you and Donny dealt with. What was her name again? You probably don’t even remember.
I talked ‘bout the money you laundered, the politicians you bought, the cover-ups. I talked about the way you helped me with dodgy police reports when Kayden needed sortin’.
It’s taken me weeks to write it all down.
Man, we got up to some stuff, didn’t we? ”
“You’re bluffing.” His voice came through clenched teeth.
“No, I ain’t. Not this time. I left those notes where they’re gonna be found real soon. Hell, you’ll be lucky to make it to the highway before the blue lights are on your ass. You might wanna get the fuck outta here. Get a head start.”
A small sound came out of me. Half laugh, half choke.
It hurt like a bastard. I felt like a hand had reached up under my ribs and squeezed my damn kidney. A coughing fit took over, and I doubled over, trying to stop the pain ripping up my back.
“You’re done, Bob,” I croaked as I laughed. “Whether I walk outta here or not, you’re fuckin’ done.”
The pistol came up over the top of the drum, and Bob fired.
The round caught me high on the left shoulder. It branded me, right through the meat and out the back, and the pain took my breath with it.
The shotgun jerked hard in my grip, and I squeezed the damn trigger. The blast went wide and high, opening up a crater in the cave wall a foot over Bob’s head. Dust and rock fragments rained down on the drum.
I racked the slide, but my hand wasn’t working right. The stitches in my pinky stump had let go for good. Fresh blood ran between my fingers. The shotgun weighed a bloody ton.
I couldn’t get another round off in time. Bob charged toward me.
I couldn’t fight him. I had to run. Had to get to the fissure at the back.
The plan had always been to fall back through that gap, come out the back, circle round, and put a load of buckshot through Bob’s spine while he was still trying to figure out where I’d gone. The plan had never been me getting shot first.
I shoved off the sandstone shelf and ran.
But my legs were like fucking jelly, wobbling all over the place. My left arm was hanging off my shoulder like it didn’t belong to me. The cave swam and tilted, and the bat roost above me swung with it. My breathing croaked in and out of me, ragged and wet, the sound of a man coming apart.
I made it ten steps before Bob fired again.
The bullet punched into my lower back. My legs stopped existing. The world tilted clean past sideways, and the floor came up and hit me in the face.
A scream came out of me that wasn’t human. It came up out of my chest and tore my throat open, and I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t dial it down, couldn’t even breathe around it.
The shotgun had slid out of my hand. I could see it in the dirt about six feet away. Might as well have been six miles.
Above me, the bats had gone berserk. The gunfire had set the whole roost off, and they were screeching and wheeling around the cave roof, hundreds of leather wings beating in the dark, their stink raining down with them.
I tried to push myself up.
Nothing happened from the waist down.
My hands worked. My good arm worked. My legs were two dead things attached to my hips, and they weren’t getting any messages from upstairs.
He’d put a bullet through my spine. Half my body was fucked. I’d seen enough downed cattle in my time to know the only answer was a bullet.
Frank Branson was done.
The empty service revolver was pressed up under my hipbone where I’d fallen on it. I tried to slide my good hand under to reach it, but couldn’t get the angle, couldn’t roll enough weight off the damn thing. Pain tore through me so bad I gave up.
The gun was worthless anyway.
Bob’s boots came into my field of vision. Worn, brown cop boots. Same boots he’d been wearing for years. He stood two feet from my face. I waited for him to shoot me. I lay there with my face pressed to the dirt and got ready for the muzzle against the back of my skull. That’s what he would do.
No witnesses. He’d said that dozens of times.
But Bob didn’t shoot.
His boots moved past my head. I tracked them as far as I could turn my neck.
He went to the duffel, and I heard the zip slide close.
His boots crunched over gravel again, then he crouched beside me, close enough I could see his face if I rolled my eyes up.
Gray stubble. A smear of Lyle’s blood on his cheek he wouldn’t know was there.
The same brown eyes I’d been looking at since we were teenagers.
He looked tired.
“Looks like you’re getting your wish, Frank.”
I tried to answer. Couldn’t get the breath up.
“Dying on your fucking shithole Koolaroo.”
“Fuck you,” I growled.
He stood and picked up the duffel. His boots turned. But he didn’t walk to the cave mouth. He turned the other way.
Toward the bats.
Toward the back exit.
No!
I tried to lift my head, but couldn’t. I got a slice of him as he passed under the wheeling bats, the duffel swinging at his hip. He didn’t stop. Didn’t hesitate. He walked straight toward the back exit.
He’d known it was there.
How? When?
That bastard was three steps ahead of me again. Same as every fucking time.
The bats stirred wilder as Bob ducked into the fissure.
“Kill me, you gutless fucking prick.” The words came out of me as a wet wheeze.
He didn’t stop.
I dragged in a breath, but it burned like hell. Something inside me was punctured. Air was getting somewhere it shouldn’t.
“Finish me off, Bob,” I barked as loud as I could. “Don’t leave me like this. Finish it.”
He didn’t break stride, and then he was gone.
The cave went quiet.
The bats wheeled to their roost, folded their wings, and went back to hanging in the dark like dirty washing. Same as they had the night we’d put Kat in the dirt and lit the fire in the drum. Same as they had every other time we’d buried bodies and bits in this cave. The bats didn’t give a shit.
The pain came in waves. Each one bigger than the last. My kidneys were on fire, my chest was packing it in, and my shoulder didn’t feel like a shoulder anymore, just a hole where one used to be. Every breath I took was wrong. Wet. Bubbling.
I thought I knew what dying felt like. For months I’d been at it. Waiting for it. Counting the days.
I didn’t know shit.
Just fuckin’ take me already.
I’d never begged for anything in my life. Not from God. Not from any man.
I begged for it now. Whatever was running this show needed to hurry the fuck up.
Time went soft and stupid.
I tried to move to see my shoulder. But the pain paralyzed me.
I couldn’t crawl, couldn’t sit up, couldn’t roll.
Lyle was still moaning. Or maybe that was me. I couldn’t tell.
Somewhere outside, the wedge-tail eagle was probably still working his slow circle in the blue.
The patient bastard had won.
“Hey, Lyle.” I couldn’t decide if my voice came out. I strained to listen to his reply but got nothing but the bats, scratching and shuffling nonstop. Plus, there was the whistling wind through the scrub outside.
That’s when I heard footsteps on gravel approaching the entrance.
Bob.
He’d come back. Maybe he thought he owed me some mercy after all.
He was coming back to finish me.
A bullet. The end.
No more pain.
Relief moved through me.
I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the cool sandstone.
Come on then, you bastard. Finish what you started.