Seventy-Six
ANOTHER TREE brANCH Lynyrd Crockett doesn’t see coming whips his face. His brother’s flashlight a few yards ahead does him no good at all.
“By the time we get there,” Lynyrd says, “I’m gonna look like one of ’em scratched my eyes out.”
“I told you,” Roof says, “the complaints box is full already.”
They’ve hidden the pickup where they always do, tucked behind some trees just off the narrow dirt road, and are making their way through the woods.
“You sure the cops didn’t follow us out here after we left Daddy’s house?”
“It’s why we used the tunnel.”
They’ve been to these parts plenty of times before, to the abandoned hilltop farmhouse surrounded by empty land their father had once used for hunting. They’ve just had to take more of a circle route tonight after thinking they’d heard some of what their daddy called prairie wolves in the vicinity.
“Fucking cops are watching us all twenty-four seven now,” Lynyrd says. “Feel like they’ve got eyes on me even when I take a piss.”
They finally see the lights from the farmhouse now up ahead of them, knowing the first two men with guns will be at the edge of the clearing, wearing their night-vision goggles and camouflage outfits.
Roof holds the flashlight up high, signals with it twice.
When they reach the two gunnies, part of the small force the big boss has hired, Roof says to them, “He here?”
“Been here about twenty minutes,” the taller and wider of the men says. “Said you and your brother were supposed to already be in the house.”
“Thought we might have run into a coyote.”
“Well,” the second gun says, “our coyote thinks the two of you are late.”
“You been up to the house?” Roof asks them.
“We switched off with Harv and Mo and came down here about an hour ago,” he says. “The copter’s already landed, you know, behind.”
Roof says, “Girls ready to go?”
The first gun says, “In a manner of speaking.”