Coldwater Revenge by James Ross (best e reader for android .txt) 📕

a reluctant step backward and Tom propped himself on an elbow. “That’s far enough,” said Frankie. “Say that again?”

“I have a message for you,” he repeated, this time with a bit more breath. “From Dr. Hassad.”

“I don’t know a Dr. Hassad,” said Frankie, cautiously. “What’s the message?”

“It’s a question. Can you replace the delivery boy?”

Frankie shone the light directly on Tom’s face and then began to circle it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tommy Morgan. And my gut tells me you don’t know what you’re talking about, either.”

“Think about it,” Tom answered, gulping air. “What else would I be doing here?”

Frankie circled the torchlight across the top of Tom’s thigh. “That’s sort of the question, isn’t it?”

A sound escaped from the back of the dog’s throat like an opening of a blast furnace.

“Be patient, Soldier,” soothed Heller. “I think he’s full of it, too. But we got to be sure now, don’t we?” The furnace noise subsided but did not disappear. “Hush!”

As Frankie stroked his stubbled face, a pair of headlights cleared the hill above the garage and slid fast down the gravel drive into the junkyard. The car came to a halt about twenty yards away from the men and dog, its high beams freezing them like deer on a roadside. Only the dog did not put a forearm to his eyes.

Tom heard the squeal of un-oiled door hinge and the crunch of steps on gravel. He could only guess what lay beyond the glare; and he muttered a prayer that it was Joe, risen from his sick bed to save his brother’s ass one more time.

“Looks like you got here at a good time,” said Frankie in the direction of the new arrival. Then an explosion split the air behind the headlights and Frankie’s torso jerked backward as if yanked by a rope. Blood splashed across his sweat-stained beater shirt and wicked outward in a fast spreading arc. The dog whirled, first toward Frankie and then toward the glare of headlight. Another explosion concussed Tom’s ears, followed by a yelp, and then a third explosion.

Tom leaped from the ground and dodged behind a row of wrecked cars. CRACK! Ping! Shots ricocheted from car to car, the sound of metal on metal like some giant pinball machine. Tom ran between rows of junked cars, around and behind them, through ones with missing doors and under a pair that were propped together on end like a tepee. He tried to circle behind the lights, banging time and again into sharp, unseen protrusions. But the clap of gunfire and ping of punctured metal kept herding him in unhelpful directions. It seemed the shooter preferred to keep him in silhouette.

Diving into a wrecked Lincoln Town Car filled with cobwebs and mouse droppings, Tom lay on sodden upholstery trying to catch his breath, and felt something slither from beneath the seat and disappear beneath the one in front. His bladder rippled. Through the broken windshield, he watched a cone of light work its way from side to side along the row of junked cars. He slid through the door-less side of the wreck and crawled away from the light.

He tried to remember the layout of the junkyard from his visit with Joe a few days earlier. A chain link fence surrounded the yard, open at the front by the garage and somewhere in the rear a gate that the shooter’s car had driven through. Heller must have left it open, expecting company.

The spotlight reached the end of the row and went out. For a moment, Tom saw only moonlight and heard only crickets. He moved cautiously through wet weeds, broken glass and assorted metal debris, trying not to crash or curse out loud.

Then the headlights started to move, turning slowly away from the garage and stopping in the narrow row between the first two lines of junk cars. The spotlight came on again and began to wand between the rows of wrecks, moving methodically from side to side and car to car.

Tom crawled toward the fence. After a few minutes the headlights moved again, lighting up the alley between the next rows of cars with the spotlight moving back and forth between them like a metronome. He reached the fence and began to crawl along its perimeter, feeling as if he were in one of those WWII submarine movies where the destroyer lays out a grid and slowly closes in on the helpless submarine crew trapped on the bottom. Bits of broken glass and plastic junk punctured his knees and palms. He tried to remember the last time he had a tetanus shot, and then grimaced at the foolish optimism behind the thought. Part of him must think he was going to survive the next few minutes.

The headlights moved again. From the angle of the fence he could tell that the car must be near the final row. He had no idea how far he might be from the gate, or if it was open. Up ahead, facing the yard, he could see the silhouette of an owl sitting motionless on top of the fence. Another hunter out for its evening prey. The flat-faced head swiveled slowly in its socket and focused an appraising eye in Tom’s direction. The headlights moved again, a row away now.

Then a loud metal squeal made Tom’s neck go rigid. The spotlight passed through the door of an old yellow school bus, where from inside burst a sound like a million tiny flags snapping in a hard wind.

THUT! THUT! THUT! THUT! THUT! THUT! THUT!

The owl swooped from the chain link fence and dove toward the light. Suddenly, the air was thick with small, mouse-like creatures zooming in dense, dark clouds. Tom crouched low and sprinted through the cloud of frenzied bats, found the gate and disappeared into the darkness.

CHAPTER 22

Cold, aching and hurt, Tom hid in the woods until he saw headlights pull away from the junkyard and disappear over the