One Hundred Eight
I SEE WHERE he’s headed. It’s easy, wearing night-vision goggles designed for hunters and military personnel.
I feel like both.
There’s a truck off to the side of the road, a motorcycle next to it, looking like the hog Roof Crockett used to roar around town on as a high schooler looking to piss everybody off.
I can’t let him get back on it now.
Even if the others catch up with us, the van is all the way over on the other side of the mountain.
Roof will get away, maybe for good.
Get with his father somehow and get away, something he should have done already.
He’s running for the motorcycle now, but I’m running faster for him, closing on him, in the open myself and not caring, firing away, putting bullets into the ground all around him, still wanting to take him alive if I possibly can.
He turns and fires again, wildly, then crouches behind the bike and uses it for cover.
I roll to the side now and then rise up long enough to put a bullet into the front wheel of the bike and then the other.
“Not gonna let you leave, Roof.”
“Fucker Tucker,” he says. “What I used to call your old man.”
Then he’s coming up from behind the bike and his rifle is coming up with him, but I make one last spin move, to my left, and then steady my arm and my hand and see my next shot straighten him up.
Just like ball.
Hit what you aim at.
The next bullet catches him dead center, just a little lower than the first, and then he is going to the ground and so is the motorcycle.
One more time, the night goes still.
I move carefully toward him, going left and then right, making myself a moving target one last time just to make sure.
But when I get to the bike, I look down and don’t have to feel for a pulse or heartbeat to know that Roof Crockett is dead.
I look down at him and say, “You never were quick enough, you son of a bitch.”